How to set up parental controls in iTunes

Just because you let your children use iTunes doesn't mean you want to give them full access to the program or the ability to purchase whatever tunes they want. Apple has built parental controls into iTunes that give your youngster (or guests using your computer) iTunes access while restricting some of iTunes' functionality. Built-in parental controls can limit the types of things your offspring are allowed to do within iTunes, as well as limit the ratings of things they are able to access.

Setting up parental controls within iTunes is fairly simple to do, and you can customize them for each person who has access to the computer.

Set things up
Launch iTunes on your computer, and then click on the iTunes menu on the top toolbar. Select Preferences from the drop-down menu. From the Preferences window, click the Parental tab to get access to all of iTunes' parental control options.

Lock it down
Within the Parental tab, you'll see a ton of things you can restrict within the program. To disable something, click the box under the Disable header beside anything you want to prevent from being used on the computer. For instance, if you don't want your child to be able to use Ping, click the box beside it to disable Ping functionality within iTunes.

In addition to restricting specific portions of iTunes, you can also customize the ratings of content you would like to allow your child to have access to. In order to select a rating, check the box beside the type of content you would like to restrict, and then select the appropriate rating from the drop-down menu beside it. For instance, if you only want your child to be able to access G-rated movies, check the box beside Movies and then select G from the drop-down menu beside it.

Save your changes
Once you're done setting up your parental controls, click the padlock at the bottom on the menu to lock the padlock and prevent your changes from being tampered with. When you lock the padlock, you'll be prompted to enter the administrator password for your computer. That same password will also be necessary if you ever want to go back and change any of the settings later. Your parental control selections will save without password-locking them; however, if you don't password-protect your changes, you also run the risk that your youngster will figure out how to bypass them.

As well as restricting what your child can access in iTunes, you can also restrict access to almost everything else on the computer. Check out our guide to parental controls on a Mac or guide to parental controls on a Windows computer for a quick how-to on setting up the parental controls on your computer as as whole.

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